1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a network facsimile device provided with plural communicating media and capable of selecting either one of the plural communicating media for transmitting designated information to a designated address.
2. Discussion of the Background
In recent years, the utilization of the Internet has been considered as the communication circuit for a facsimile device. As the communication standard therefor, two recommendations; ITU-T Recommendation T.37 and ITU-T Recommendation T.38 have been established.
In the ITU-T Recommendation T.37, an electronic-mail type Internet facsimile communicating method has been prescribed. In the method, the image information is communicated through the Internet by use of an electronic mail. On the other hand, in the ITU-T Recommendation T.38 based upon the Group-3 Facsimile Transmission Procedure through Internet (Procedure of ITU-T Recommendation T.30), a real-time type Internet facsimile communicating method has been prescribed. In the method, the image information is communicated in real time.
In such situation, under the establishment of the recommendation T.38, a network facsimile device which is provided with a function of communicating the image information through the public network, and in addition, a function of electronic-mail type Internet facsimile communication or real-time type Internet facsimile communication and which can perform the image information communication through the public network and the Internet has been practically used.
On the other hand, even in the technical field of the Internet, the trial of performing the facsimile communication has been practically executed by use of the Internet before the era of the ITU-T Recommendations T.37 and T38.
For instance, the document RFC (Request For Comments) 2301-2306 published by the organization responsible for technologies in relation to the Internet and called IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) prescribes the technical contents of an electronic-mail type Internet facsimile communication system for communicating facsimile image information by utilizing the electronic mail which is exchanged on the Internet.
Furthermore, in the recommendation T.37 and RFC2305 (simple-mode facsimile), the model of the used electronic mail is made common, the facsimile information can be mutually exchanged between the network facsimile device in accordance with the recommendation T.37 and a work station actually provided with the software based on RFC2305.
In such situation as mentioned heretofore, in the network facsimile device, it has been possible to select either a Group-3 facsimile communication utilizing the public network as the communicating system, an electronic-mail type Internet facsimile communication utilizing the electronic mail of the Internet, and a real-time type Internet facsimile communication.
On the other hand, the address information for designating the address to be communicated differs, respectively, in the Group-3 facsimile communication, the electronic-mail type Internet facsimile communication, and the real-time type Internet facsimile communication.
For instance, the telephone number on the public network is used as the address information in the Group-3 facsimile communication, an e-mail address is used as the address information in the electronic-mail type Internet facsimile communication, and the IP address is used as the address information in the real-time type Internet facsimile communication.
Therefore, in the network facsimile device as mentioned above, it is necessary to register one to three different types of address information for each address to be communicated to. If individual keys are provided for designating the address information, problems likely occur since the number of operation keys of the network facsimile device increases and that results in a cost increase of the apparatus, or the operations for designating the addresses to be communicated to becomes further complicated.